Nature-Symphony 67
— Flies as musicians (2): wholetone minor 6th (explicit)

Opus 101 (2024) — Timing: 48'

derived from a recording of flies and bumblebees, with birds and grasshopper(s)

Nature-symphonies — a transformational discovery (background notes)…

It was in 2012 that I tentatively started recording natural soundscapes, and within a few months got the idea of purchasing some high-grade precision-tuned wind chimes to record out in the wilds, hung up on tree branches. …

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… I quickly found that not only was the sound of each set of chimes individually beautiful and to some extent inspiring in quality when recorded out in the wild like that (mostly high-up in the Teign Gorge, Devon, UK), but also, almost all of the combinations of different chimes worked out beautifully musically, though naturally some combinations made a more 'challenging' listen than others.

Much more recently I tried making a half-speed version of part of each of the most appealing or otherwise 'promising' chimes ensemble recordings. They were each a revelation — immensely beautiful, with quite dramatic transformation of the original sound. That is, not just a matter of being slower and an octave lower, but the whole musical and emotional effect changed.

But then, in late August 2023 I got this little urge to do something really stupid (all the world's 'sheep' know I'm stupid anyway, so I thought I might as well do it anyway!), and try putting a particularly evocative chimes ensemble recording in a virtual cathedral, of all things, just to see how crazy it might sound.

I tried that with a particularly usable and effective reverb VST plugin called Orilriver, and was bowled over by the results. Shivers up spine, and plenty of goose-bumps for good measure! I then did listening spot tests using Orilriver in preview mode on a wide selection of my half-speed chimes recordings, and every one was incredibly, amazingly, transformed.

It was clear that I'd sort-of unwittingly stumbled into producing powerfully beautiful stochastic / probability-driven music works that have a lot in common with the ethos and methods of Iannis Xenakis, but with a big practical difference. Whereas typically he worked out probabilistic structures and processes to shape many of his works, this lunatic composer instead left that task to 'Mother Nature', then transforming those sounds in a way that Xenakis did in most of his electroacoustic works, to enhance their ability to excite the listener's own inner creativity and to generate profound and powerful experiences in the process.

It can be no surprise, then, that in these new works of mine there would be passing (albeit partial) resemblances to certain Xenakis works — Bohor comes particularly to mind, and even, in a funny way, some aspects of Terretektorh.

It was then a real no-brainer to recognise each such piece of mine as one of my numbered public music compositions. For the purpose of a liberating simplicity I chose to classify ALL of this type of work that I produce as what I'm calling nature-symphonies. That hyphen is important, because they are not just symphonies about nature, but are a very specific type of composition — nature-generated symphonies.

The term 'symphony', although closely guarded with a very restricted meaning by small-minded traditionalists, actually just means 'sounding together', which apparently was its original meaning. For me to want to use that term, there need to be at least two contrasting elements that are in some way combined or worked together in some way that is much more effective and deeply inspiring than the sum of those elements.

Although, in terms of my own nature-symphonies, that would mean ensembles rather than solo chimes sets, I've found that certain of my recordings using just one chimes set still produce effective and powerful nature-symphonies because of some element of the natural soundscape within which the chimes were sounding. A weir or waterfall, for example, or the wind itself, or a liberal amount of bird sound (much of which latter sounds remarkably musical at half-speed).

As for title for each work, they won't all necessarily have a title beyond Nature-Symphony [nn]. I'll add an imaginative title only where the finished piece suggests one to me. — Well, er, except that I do have one title earnestly looking for a work for it to be applied to, but currently I don't see how it could fit any extant or future transformed wind chimes works of mine! Not telling why!

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Basic details

Instrumentation — A field recording of flies and bumblebees, grasshopper(s), and a little linnet song and calls.
Original field recording location / dates: I made the original recording on 14 July 2024 high up on Cranbrook Down, on the track from the Cranbrook byway track to the top of the hill (Cranbrook Castle, an ancient hill fort), high above the Teign Gorge (Drewsteignton, Devon, UK).
Processing and deployment: This work has eight layers, as detailed in the Freesound page for this work, where the processing is also described. They are tuned to two minor sixth chords on the wholetone scale, with a tritone added at the bottom.
Distinguishing features — A little linnet song provides our opening sweet 'fanfare', but after that the linnets are largely silent apart from the odd burst of contact calls. Here we have an intriguing soundscape of flies singing and dancing in the wholetone scale — guaranteed to sound colourfully tough and nature-connecting! At times a foraging bumblebee takes centre-stage by giving us a busy-sounding chord of all the pitches of the eight layers — a beautiful vibrant sound, full of a positive energy.

Here and there, the sound of a distant farm tractor at work joins in. Because it itself is effectively unpitched, it doesn't exactly sound 'musical', yet, like unpitched percussion and effects used in some concert-hall music compositions, it forms a welcome part of the overall soundscape, adding to a sense of a busy joie de vivre, rather than being an unwanted intruder (I cut out the odd sections where it did get a bit too prominent).

The flies' timbres are an important aspect of each Nature-Symphony using them. Generally, in these processed arrangements, each individual fly sounds remarkably like a fast tremolando orchestral strings section, albeit more precisely located but on the move. So, we get sonorities ranging from delicate sul ponticello violins right down to double-basses (sometimes sounding like a cross between that and a contrabassoon).

Nature-Symphony 67— Flies as musicians (2): wholetone minor 6th (explicit)

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 67
— Flies as musicians (2): wholetone minor 6th (explicit)